


All Is Calm

by joycometh



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Christmas, Established Relationship, Post-Series, Religion, Souled Spike (BtVS), references to violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-15 04:55:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16926891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joycometh/pseuds/joycometh
Summary: On Christmas Eve, Spike finds solace for his hurting soul.





	All Is Calm

**Author's Note:**

> This fic explores a souled Victorian vampire's complicated relationship with religion. If hearing Christianity spoken of either well or poorly is difficult for you, you may want to pass by. Also, this one is a little angstier than I tend to go. Been listening to too much Christmas music in a minor key!

He slipped in the back, vampire-silent. He had been careful to wait until after the service had started, so no one would see him.

He knew it was wrong to be here. He’d even lied to Buffy _. Going for a smoke_ , he’d tossed off carelessly. _Got to take a breather_. She’d laugh if he knew where he was, or grill him over it, with that worried look on her face. He couldn’t stand either right now.

The house had been fuller than he was comfortable with, a complete bleeding Scooby Christmas reunion. Everything was loud and cheery and modern, Xander’s and Dawn’s brats getting everything sticky. Buffy was radiant. Spike felt with every passing moment how little he belonged, how little he fit into her sparkly domestic world. Sometimes he could forget just how much Buffy had pretzeled her life in order to fit him into it. But not tonight.

He’d run.

Spike bowed his head as soon as he settled into the pew, not for piety's sake but to try to tamp down the tremors that crept across his flesh, the tactile sense that he didn’t belong here, wasn’t wanted, wasn’t made right. He kept his hands tucked in under him, so he didn’t accidently brush the Bible or the little Book of Common Prayer resting unassumingly in the rack in front of him. He didn’t want to burn tonight.

He didn’t dare look at the cross, but he could feel it along the edge of his senses, a burning bright streak of power with a pull like Eve’s apple.

In front of him the sparse churchgoers followed along with their service, confessing their sins and praying for mercy (as if their pretty, petty lives warranted it), warbling out _In the Bleak Midwinter_ and _Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming._ In their profiles he thought he glimpsed old victims—the grandpa in his Snoopy tie became a man he’d thrown under a train in Paris to watch his old body spatter apart, just because it was something new to do. A passel of whispering children, clearly hyped up on sugar cookies and anticipation, took on the features of an orphanage he’d slaughtered with Dru, a present for their anniversary. The tall, thin priest with her fluting voice became a young widow he’d drained at her husband’s funeral, when he’d slipped into a church just as silently he had tonight.

It was tearing him apart, to be here. His vampire’s flesh was crawling, and he half expected to feel the skitter of insects across it. He still woke up screaming sometimes, remembering the trials. At the same time his soul’s guilt was tearing him apart, but he’d come for that, hadn’t he? Come for punishment. Come to remember that he was unnatural, irreconcilable. Come for the truth that Buffy so lovingly refused to acknowledge. That he was lost. No matter what he did now, he’d never earn back his place in a holy room like this.

Spike ran his hands over his face in frustration. He should just bloody go. Ridiculous thing, flagellating himself like this.

But he didn’t move. Because somewhere deeper, somewhere under the crawling flesh, somewhere before the nightmare memories, somewhere in the very roots of where his soul was planted, there was some seed of calm in him. The words of the service were different than when he’d been a tot, his head laid on his mother’s shoulder while she traced her finger over her Bible, but the rhythm was the same. Word by word, song by song, prayer by prayer, that seed of calm grew, and for a minute he was able to pretend that the world had never gone dark, that all was still as bright as it had been during the Christmases of his childhood.

There wasn’t much in the world left that reminded him of the safety he’d known before darkness fell. And so it was that time to time he fell reluctantly into these churches, like an alcoholic into a bar. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t good. It didn’t make sense. But he needed it.

He didn’t follow along. He didn’t pray. He didn’t stand. He didn’t sing a bleeding note. But the rhythms of the service washed over him like the heartbeat he’d lost, and the frustrated tension began to leave his body.

Spike slipped out during the opening chords to _Silent Night_. He didn’t want someone to hand him a candle. He’d blot out the light just by being there, he thought.

But he stood just outside the heavy wooden door on the church’s front step, his vampire’s hearing catching every soft, straining note.

Spike wasn’t a religious man. Or a religious vamp. The very idea was balderdash. You don’t get dragged through a century plus of hell and still hold to any fairy tale nonsense about a 2000 year old baby having any sway in your life.

And yet he stood on outside that sanctuary, and something deep in his soul opened just a bit more. He’d _wanted_ to be torn apart, he realized. Wanted to be reminded that when he was peeled open by fear and guilt, that’s when he could see his soul the clearest, like a broken bone poking through the skin. He had a soul. It wasn’t a myth. It wasn’t a trick. He was himself. He’d crawled and scrapped his way back from hell, and he was himself.

Spike took a deep breath of cool winter air and turned away from the little stone church, heading for home. Heading for home, to Buffy who loved him.

He was a vampire. A murderer. But he was loved. And he had learned, at last, how to love. Not just Buffy, but all of them. The whole dysfunctional family. His family.

He rolled his shoulders, lighter now, as his boots crunched the light layer of snow.

In his mind, he thought he could hear the warbling congregation finish the hymn.

_Radiant beams from thy holy face_  
_with the dawn of redeeming grace_  
_Sleep in heavenly peace_  
_Sleep in heavenly peace._

It was funny, Spike thought. He’d been chasing redemption for a bloody long time. Hunting salvation down like a bloody tracker dog, and he was exhausted.

But he might just stop for tonight. For just this one night, he might stop. Mix a little grace in with his redemption.

And maybe, when he got home, there’d be some of Willow’s cayenne chocolate cookies left over.

They were his favorite.

Spike walked home in the calm and quiet dark.


End file.
